A scandal that already has taken down Britain’s best-selling Sunday tabloid and launched an inquiry into journalistic practices in the country widened Monday with startling allegations against two more News International newspapers.
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown believes journalists from the Sunday Times and The Sun newspapers tried to obtain private information from his financial records and telephone voice messages, a source close to Brown told CNN.
The efforts date back some 10 years, to when Brown was prime minister and before that chancellor of the exchequer, the source confirmed.
Journalists from The Sun tabloid — the country’s best-selling daily newspaper — obtained details about Brown’s seriously ill son and published a story about him, while people working for the upmarket Murdoch Sunday Times tricked Brown’s accountants into handing over financial details, the former prime minister alleges, according to the source.
News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and owner of the papers, did not immediately respond to the allegations. They come in the wake of the closure of another of the company’s newspapers, News of the World, over other allegations of illegal breach of privacy.
Until it ceased publishing on Sunday, News of the World was the largest-selling Sunday newspaper in the country.
The decision to close the News of the World followed accusations that it illegally eavesdropped on the phone messages of murder and terrorist victims, politicians and celebrities, and claims it may have bribed police officers. Police said Thursday they had identified almost 4,000 potential targets of phone-hacking.
The widening scandal and public outrage over it threatens to scuttle plans by Murdoch to create Britain’s largest media company by acquiring satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
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One Response
It seems they were hacking not only the leading Labor party politicians (including his baby’s medical records), but also the royal family and some police. Not only are they in big trouble under British law, but the parent company (which among other things owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox) may have violated the American “Foreign Corrupt Practices Act”. This could end up being a big story.